July 11, 2005

It’s great to have such great friends. Dominique Cimafranca, Charo, and Charlie Lopez were absolutely invaluable during the impromptu Software Freedom Day planning meeting we had earlier. We brainstormed for ways to bring SuSE users and enthusiasts out of the woodwork in order to address Novell’s wants. It’s a pity the Novell guy couldn’t join us (he had to deal with a client’s emergency), but I guess he can always get these people together himself.

Anyway. Back to the insights.

Although we had originally planned to hold the event in UP because UP
offered us a venue for free, our ever so wonderful counselors
suggested much better locations in Makati. The Glorietta Activity
Center is the best place on our list: a central location with plenty
of pass-thru traffic would result in great crowds during the actual
event. Who can miss or resist a large banner inviting people to get
free software there? We’ve also added AIM to our list. It’s amazing
how other people can jolt us out of our limiting assumptions…

I guess the key paradigm shift here is that we can plan with
sponsorship in mind. The bigger we dare to plan, the bigger the
possibilities are. And I _want_ to reach out to the casual user, the
Windows-using non-geek who’s missing out on all the wonderful free
software out there. If we manage to convince them to switch to Linux,
well and good. But if they don’t feel comfortable doing that yet,
there’s still plenty of free software out there to make their lives
better. Mozilla Firefox. Openoffice.org. Gaim. Stuff like that.

I’m coming to realize that my address book is more important than my
source code. Having these insightful people on my team… wow!